As more and more enterprises move infrastructure from in-house data centers to off-site public clouds, they begin to see changes in staffing requirements and functions almost immediately. At the very least, IT shops are freed from the work of purchasing, installing, configuring and upgrading hardware. You already know about those benefits.

But when an enterprise moves further along their migration journey to include a much larger percentage of the infrastructure and perhaps higher levels of the software stack, it will eventually reach a tipping point -- where the benefits begin to build on one another, exposing unanticipated opportunities that can increase organizational efficiency, reduce staffing requirements and lower asset costs in a step-wise manner...

Leaders are wise to understand the nature of the benefits of cloud — where tipping points occur, when and why they matter—so they can adequately assess risks and develop more comprehensive business cases for their cloud plans...